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;i .,. . . . . Alabama is therefore entitled to the sovereignty and jurisdiction over all the territory within her limits, subject to the common law, to the same extent that Georgia possessed it before she ceded it to the United States. To maintain any other doctrine, is to deny that Alabama has been admitted into the union on an equal footing with the original states, the constitution, laws, and compact, to the contrary notwithstanding. But her rights of sovereignty and jurisdiction are not governed by the common law of England as it prevailed in the colonies before the Revolution, but as modified by our own institutions. In the case of Martin and other v. Waddell, 16 Pet., 410, the present chief justice, in delivering the opinion of the court, said: "When the Revolution took place, the people of each state became themselves sovereign; and in that character hold the absolute right to all their navigable waters, and the soils under them for their own common use, subject only to the rights since surrendered by the Constitution." Then to Alabama belong the navigable waters, and soils under them, in controversy in this case, subject to the rights surrendered by the Constitution to the United States; and no compact that might be made between her and the United States could diminish or enlarge these rights. Pollard v. Hagan, 44 U.S. 228-29. The Court continued: "This right of eminent domain over the shores and the soils under the navigable waters, for all municipal purposes, belongs exclusively to the States within their respective territorial jurisdictions, and they, and they only, have the constitutional power to exercise it." Id. at 230. It of course remains true that "in the hands of the states this power can never be used so as to affect the exercise of any national right of eminent domain or jurisdiction with which the United States have been invested by the Constitution." Id. Nevertheless, "[t]he shores of navigable waters, and the soils under them, were not granted by the Constitution to the United States, but were reserved to the states respectively." 1d.9 It remains true that such states' rights are always subject to superseding federal law, including the dormant Commerce Clause. See Shively v. Bowlby, 152 U.S. 1, 14-15 (1894) ("The various charters granted by different monarchs of the Stuart dynasty for large tracts of territory on the Atlantic coast conveyed to the grantees both the territory described and the powers of government, including the property and the dominion of lands under tide waters; and, upon the American Revolution, all the rights of the crown and of parliament vested in the several states, subject to the rights surrendered to the national government by the constitution of the United States.") (citations omitted) (emphasis added). Nonetheless, since application of the Commerce Clause always involves a balancing test, the argument could be made that the balancing should be tilted 9 The question of control over non-navigable surface waters was settled in favor ofthe states by California Oregon Power Co. v. Beaver Portland Cement Co., 295 U.S. ]42, ]58 (1935). However, this case grounded its ruling in the Desert Land Act and so covers only the western states. Hardin v. Jordan implies that eastern states control their surface waters unless they cede that control to riparian property owners. See Hardin v. Jordan, ]40 U.S. 37], 38]-82 (189]). 15